ABSTRACT
Leon Battista Alberti was one of the few Renaissance architects who deployed Latin as a language for storytelling. Most other architects after Alberti have alternated between regional vernaculars (that is, dialects) and proper Italian. This chapter explores the deployment of the vernacular as a language of storytelling and as a language for building (and drawing) in Italy during the twentieth century. Most of these architects used drawings, photography, and even painting to help tell and illustrate their vernacular stories of Italy’s lesser-known heritage in a land most known for its Popes and Caesars. Throughout the twentieth century, Italian architects and designers produced remarkable buildings, paintings, and objects inspired by the basic volumes, simple materials, and regional values of a vernacular tradition that evolved over centuries of agrarian life.
